The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) unites six telecommunications standards bodies, known as “Organizational Partners”, and provides their members with a stable environment to produce the highly successful Reports and Specifications that define 3GPP technologies. These technologies are constantly evolving through what have become known as “generations” of commercial cellular/mobile systems. 3GPP also uses a system of parallel “releases” to provide developers with a stable platform for implementation and to allow for the addition of new features required by the market. Each release includes specific functionality and features that are specified in detail by the version of the 3GPP standards associated with that release.
Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) is an umbrella term for the third generation (3G) radio technologies developed within 3GPP and initially standardised in Release 4 and Release 99, which preceded Release 4. UMTS includes specifications for both the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) as well as the Core Network. UTRAN includes the original Wideband CDMA (W-CDMA) radio access technology that uses paired or unpaired 5-MHz channels, initially within frequency bands near 2 GHz but subsequently expanded into other licensed frequency bands. The UTRAN generally includes node-Bs (NBs) and radio network controllers (RNCs). Similarly, GSM/EDGE is an umbrella term for the second-generation (2G) radio technologies initially developed within the European Telecommunication Standards institute (ETSI) but now further developed and maintained by 3GPP. The GSM/EDGE Radio Access Network (GERAN) generally comprises base stations (BSs) and base station controllers (BSCs).
Long Term Evolution (LTE) is another umbrella term for so-called fourth-generation (4G) radio access technologies developed within 3GPP and initially standardised in Releases 8 and 9, also known as Evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN). As with UMTS, LTE is targeted at various licensed frequency bands, including the 700-MHz band in the United States. LTE is accompanied by improvements to non-radio aspects commonly referred to as System Architecture Evolution (SAE), which includes Evolved Packet Core (EPC) network. LTE continues to evolve through subsequent releases. One of the features under consideration for Release 11 is an enhanced Physical Downlink Control Channel (ePDCCH), which has the goals of increasing capacity and improving spatial reuse of control channel resources, improving inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC), and supporting antenna beam forming and/or transmit diversity for control channel.